January 2012

• Testing various live video streaming products and E-learning products at Tasmanian Principal Computers. They also demonstrated Vidyo software, a program that allows smooth video streaming across all kinds of devices (computer, tablet, ipads, smartphones and laptops). It is possible to integrate several camera angles at once as long as the devices are not too close to one another. Adjacent rooms work fine, but we experienced considerable interference when we attempted to test in the same room as one another.
• Strengthening partnerships within project team.
• Checking visibility between different devices (smartphones, laptops, CCTV, desktop computers, tablets and high quality VC setups).

February 2012

• Our project partnered with Tasmanian Principal Computers and Zimmah Coffee Lab, an wirelessly NBN-enabled dedicated coffee roastery and coffee training facility in Hobart. Both businesses are owned and operated by Mr James Murdoch and Mr Andrew Davies. They will provide a space for the project to test, train and assess in from March 2012. They are also assisting the NBN VET Together project by providing technical and strategic advice.
• We have enrolled the first project participants from existing apprentices at Industrylink, VET in Schools Certificate I students and community groups in the unit of competency, Process Financial Transactions. Unfortunately, the timing of the project's commencement has coincided with the most hectic time of year for both the VET in Schools, Commercial Cookery apprentices and participating Hospitality enterprises. This has delayed identification of project participants. We anticipate that this will become easier in mid-March as things settle down. We aim to have all project members enrolled by March 8th.
• The project manager met with Mr Bronte Price, Director of Regional Development, from the Department of Economic Development and the Arts to discuss the project and seek strategic advice.
• Three members of the project team met with Mr John McGee, Director of Digital Futures in the Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts and gained insight into the Digital Futures strategy and its relationship to the NBN E-learning strategy.
• Two members of the project team met with Ms Shirley Grace, Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Co-ordinator to promote the project and seek strategic advice regarding engaging local councils in supporting the project.
• Frankie Forsyth and the project manager created a WikiSpaces page as a resource for the NBN VET Together project team to access related documents and information relating to the project.
• Members of the project team tested the participants' ability to discern various forms of tender via the current video conferencing equipment. Earlier tests determined that unless the canditate stood close to the camera, it was not possible to tell $20 and $50 dollar notes apart, which would compromise the reliability of assessing via recorded live streaming. We discoved that the resolution required to reliably train and assess cash handling and counting is 1080p. Some schools already have cameras of this resolution. Other project groups will require upgrades to their existing devices.
• Members of the project team participated in E-learning professional development activities, facilitated by Leigh Blackall. They gained skills in using WikiSpaces, Wikipedia and associated Wiki projects.
• Issues with data allowances and download speeds at the NBN-enabled project partners at Midway Point slowed down some initial trails. The project manager is in negotiations with the ISPs of the two sites to improve the access to the best possible bandwidth at the project locations.
• The project manager met with Mr Glen McNeil from Midway Point Store to determine how to best use the current Point of Sale CCTV in the store for training and assessment purposes. They determined that there is current technology that may be adapted for the project purposes which can display two camera angles at once and syncs with the POS reporting system. The 1080p cameras can operate using facial recognition and the recorded playback can be viewed with the transaction reports on screen. Midway Point Store has some aspects of this system, but their CCTV is currently operating separately to their POS system. We are now attempting to gain access to this technology from the company who owns it, for the purposes of trialling the system's usefulness in teaching cash handling skills.

• Four members of the Industrylink hospitality training team participating in training for the TAE04 elective unit Facilitate E-learning with Frankie Forsyth from Pelion Consulting. The participants gained skills in using such free ware and cloudware as Dropbox, Delicious, Hot Potatoes, Skype and Facebook. They will now use these skills to assist in devising the content for delivering the training for Process Financial Transactions.
• Four members of the Project team conducted video conferencing trials between the AARNET connection at the Hutchins School and the wireless NBN connection at Zimmah coffee. We determined that the speeds of the AARNET connection (using an ethernet cable) were almost 5 times the speed of the wireless NBN connection at the time of the trial (mid-morning). We also determined for the two different video conferencing setups - Polycom 8000 and Vidyo - to be able to "talk" to one another, fairly significant set up work needs to be undertaken to enable this. The recording of the trials can be viewed here Video conferencing and visibility trials 05.03.11As can be seen in the recording, Blackboard Collaborate software was utilised to test its usefulness for teaching the Process Financial Transactions unit. Please refer to the screen captures on the Blackboard Collaborate recording for speed test results.
• We have discovered that a combination of Skype and Blackboard Collaborate may prove to be the most accessible and appropriate means of conducting this training for a range of populations outside of a learning institution at this stage.
• The project team has been trialling various 1080p cameras under different atmospheric conditions to determine whether it will be possible to deliver training in the full variety of hospitality locations that Hospitality trainees and apprentices operate in using any equipment purchased for the project. We discovered that while good visibility and resolution can be gained using standard 1080p cameras, they are not all able to withstand the high temperatures and humidity found in commercial settings. An apprentice from our Hospitality school trailled various head-mounted cameras during six busy service periods, during which the apprentice was primarily engaged in washing up using a commercial dishwasher, which runs at 85 degrees Celcius. The issues identified included: cameras fogging up, leading to loss of visibility; condensation behind the lens eventually rendering the cameras useless.
• Our project partners from Principal Computers in Hobart have established that a 1080p camera which has been developed for live streaming under extreme conditions will be released later this year. The current model can operate wirelessly and can be used for streaming in untoward situations such as in hot and humid kitchens. However, they are only useful for playback at this stage. Principal Computers will keep us informed of the release date of the all weather, high resolution cameras for videa streaming. Andrew Davies is our NBN E-learning Project team member and he can be contacted on (03) 6235 5010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (03) 6235 5010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting andrew@tasmanianpc.com.au.
• A project team member and the business manager met with an ABC Local Radio ICT Specialist in the central control room. He was able to provide good insights into the importance of clear protocols when communicating in the online environment to ensure that the communication remains clear and succinct. He was also able to provide insight into the methods that ABC radio and television use to overcome technical inconsistencies while broadcasting, including the use of 4 concurrent channels to provide backup lines of communication. We have implemented these learnings through developing a protocol for speaking during live video conferences and ensuring that the visual tools available in Elluminate are used in preference to ad hoc spoken communication or unnecessary use of the "chat" function during sessions.
• Two project team members met with Ms Maree Gerke, manager of the Tasmanian Trade Training Centres to discuss the learnings from the NBN VET Together project, and how they may contribute to informing the remote delivery model being devised for the Trade Training Centres in Southern Tasmania, three of which will be NBN-enabled. Two project team members took Ms Gerke for a tour of the Zimmah Coffee Lab, a unique space in central Hobart which is connected to the NBN via a wireless link. Speed tests demonstrated an upload speed of 14Mbps download and 1.78Mbps upload.

• We have been using the Australian E-learning Strategy (formerly the Australian Flexible Learning Framework) Learning Objects (LO) for a portion of the delivery of the underpinning knowledge for this unit. The particular LO is entitled "Balance Till/Register". This will be an excellent teaching and learning resource, however, there have been some difficulties in utilising these Learning Objects. Our learners have been experiencing problems with downloading and utilising the four activities contained within the LO. Some of the important mathematics in the activities relating to counting and adding up till floats and cash reconciliation has been incorrect. Our Content Services Advisor, Paddy McLaughlan has been most helpful in analysing the troubles and provided us with a corrected set of activities. Paddy has also been exploring online methods of distributing the corrected copy of the LO to the learners, as the permanent copy on the Australian E-Learning Strategy site is still incorrect and will be amended by E-Works (the organisation that administers the online Toolkits).
• We have experienced further difficulities in distributing the copy of the corrected LOs, as the files are too large to email. We experimented with utilising the shared cloud storage software, Dropbox, and sharing the folder with students. However, we have discovered that Dropbox is not completely stable, and the LO folders disappeared without warning on a couple of occasions.
• There have also been inconsistencies with the LO, with the answers to written activities failing to print and the pages returning to their original settings, rending the assessment outcome useless for the collection of evidence of competency.
• Paddy McLaughlan determined that the LO that we are utilising is fairly old, and that the content player in the object is outdated and needed updating in order for the media to play appropriately on all learners' computers.
• This issue has been resolved for the purposes of the project by uploading a corrected copy to the Industrylink website, with updated content player, along with instructions on how to take a screen shot of completed exercises for students to drop into documents. Students will now be asked to use the link to the corrected tool on the Industrylink website. They will be instructed to take screen shots of activities as they complete them and attach the documents to a time and date stamped email to their trainer for assessment purposes.
• Two members of the project team have been trialling webcasting cloudware for the purpose of determining a method of video conferencing using freeware, with high resolution and sound quality. We have determined that Skype, while widely used, does not provide sufficient resolution to give truly useful training results when there needs to be fine detail visable. We have trialled "Ustream", a free web casting software site and WireStream, a fairly low cost, high quality web broadcasting site which is used for online television broadcasting. The visual results were excellent when combined with good quality 1080p cameras, good quality headsets and a super fast broadband connection.
• See some of our trials with various hardware configurations here:

• Planning for the Skills Tasmania Conference showcase has begun, with a wireless NBN connection being planned to "bounce" from Midway Point (Stage 1 NBN release site) to Wrest Point Conference Centre in central Hobart.
• The project manager joined Andrew Davies and Rodney Richardson at AgFestto promote the project outcomes, utilising wireless superfast broadband and recorded/live High Definition video streaming. Check out the Country Tasmania newspaper article here: Country Tasmanian Newspaper article 04.05.12
• The project manager and Andrew Davies attended the first South East Trade Training Centres Steering Committee meeting at Sorell Skills Centre. They joined the committee to provide input into the design of the new three new Commercial Cookery Trade Training spaces in regional NBN Stage 2 roll out sites. The centres are planned to be constructed in the Sorell, Triabunna and possibly Tasman regions. The facilities will be delivering Certificates I and II in Hospitality (Kitchen Operations) to VET in Schools learners and community members, as well. We will share the learnings from our project to inform the design of the teaching spaces to incorporate live video streaming into the delivery model for Hospitality training.
• The first whole live video streaming lessons were conducted between Diploma in Hospitality students in Sorell and the NBN E-learning classroom in Hobart, with students successfully completing the practical training for the unit of competency using two camera angles for the trainer and the participant. One camera was attached to the "Chesty" GoPro harness on the participant's chest, allowing the viewer a detailed close-up view of participants' hands, cash register and EFTPOS terminal. The other camera was placed approximately 1 metre away from the participant, giving a view of the broader environment. Both cameras were attached via USB cables, with the "chesty" camera attached with a USB extension cable to allow the participant to stand and move around without pulling the USB cable out of the port too easily. The participants wore wireless headsets. We used Vidyo for the live video streaming, as it was the easiest to get a reliable view and to integrate enough camera angles to see what we needed to see. It worked well, however the trainer needed a larger monitor, as the picture was too small to discern the finer details when a 14" monitor was divided by 8.
• We ran another session with a 55cm HDTV connected to the laptop. This worked brilliantly.
• The project team attended a networking dinner prior to the Skills Tasmania Conference with other NBN E-learning Strategy project members.
• The Skills Tasmania Conference Showcase was a great success. Thanks to all brave participants who stepped up to try out the live video streaming experience on the day. Many thanks to Rodney Richardson from Secure Tas and Andrew Davies and Linden Kirth from Principal Computers for their hard work and tenacity in making the demonstration using wireless NBN possible. Thanks also to Jacqui MacLaine, Skills Tasmania Events Co-ordinator, for her assistance with making the showcase booth possible.

• Training continues with individual remote Industrylink trainees as it is Tasmania school holidays.
• More practical sessions between St Helens and Hobart using live video streaming have now been scheduled for two Certificate IV in Hospitality students from Four Mile Creek in late June.
• Working on Final Case Study and project acquittal.